When the user of a mobile device travels to a foreign country by air, the user typically shuts off the mobile device or activates “airplane mode” prior to taking off in order to deactivate the cellular radio transceiver and possibly radio transceivers of other radio access technologies (RAT) such as Wi-Fi®. Upon reaching the destination when usage of cellular radio is permitted, the user may decide to reactivate the cellular radio transceiver. Upon reactivation of the cellular radio transceiver, a 3GPP-compliant mobile device generally known as a User Equipment (UE) initially attempts to find the last registered public land mobile network (R-PLMN) or equivalent public land mobile network (E-PLMN) to perform a Location Registration by scanning all RATs with which the mobile device is capable of communicating. If no cellular radio coverage is available from the last registered PLMN (which is the case when the user travels to a foreign country), then the mobile device initiates a network scan to attempt registration on other PLMN/RAT combinations according to a 3GPP-specified order such as starting with the RAT priority specified in Home PLMN (HPLMN) and Equivalent Home PLMN (EHPLMN) Elementary File (EF) on a subscriber identity module (SIM) or universal subscriber identity module (USIM) followed by User Controlled PLMN Selector with Access Technology EF followed by Operator Controlled PLMN Selector with Access Technology EF and so on (as specified by 3GPP TS 23.122).
It will be noted that throughout the appended drawings, like features are identified by like reference numerals.